


April Showers

by aceofreaders (Kickasscookieeater)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Description of Torture, M/M, Neil learns how to dance, Nightmares, Recovery, an exercise in pestering aaron minyard, club scene, depressive episodes, falling apart and getting back up, mentions of Balitmore, soft boys in love, the Foxes love their Neil, weathering your storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-02-04 09:05:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18601369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kickasscookieeater/pseuds/aceofreaders
Summary: Spring is warm and filled with gentle winds and messy curls. It doesn't rain, but it does pour.Andrew wants Neil dressed in all the colours of the stupid rainbow. He wants him to dance. He wants him to smile and have it not be a lie.Andrew wants, for fucks sake. That should say enough.But.Neil must weather his storm.And so Andrew will wait on the other side.





	April Showers

**Author's Note:**

> hello I'm alive  
> i've been busy with assignments and my own storms to weather, but here a new fic is! 
> 
> follow me on tumblr at shesdangerace if you want to send me prompts i'll do a terrible job of filling <3 
> 
> (will she ever write about the new foxes? maybe not. will she ever specify exactly when this fic takes place? somewhere between the year after baltimore and andrews graduation. probably the year after baltimore)
> 
> p.s. For my dear friend, if you're ever reading this, one day you'll have weathered your storms too.

It’s the start of April.

Andrew is breathing in the open air and the smoke of his burning cigarette. Kevin stands across from him, arms folded, with a filthy look of displeasure on his pinched face. Andrew looks into his eyes and takes a drag.

Neil is leaning against the wall outside the Foxhole Court, smirking in equal turns at Andrew and Kevin depending on whose pettiness is loudest. He is wearing a light blue sweatshirt. Like the sky in Spring in the early morning. Clear and unhindered by shadows.

“For fuck’s sake Andrew would you stop it?”

It’s not a question.

Andrew takes another drag. Long. Slow. Blows the smoke out through his mouth on the exhale.

It’s an answer.

They’re going to Eden’s tonight. Him, Neil, Kevin, Nicky. Aaron and Aaron’s cheerleader. Neil smiled at him like he was a fucking new born puppy when he said yes to that.

But.

Neil is looking tense in his light blue. Tired eyes, clenched jaw hidden behind his smirk, twitching fingers. Andrew looks at him, lets Kevin spin himself out on another rant about the importance of lungs and Exy and whatever. 

He looks at Neil, looks at his tired eyes. Neil looks back because Neil is always looking back.

He nods at Andrew. And that’s that.

No clouds have marred the light blue sky just yet.

-

That night, Nicky dances circles around them all. Kevin only drinks half his usual amount of alcohol and lets Nicky drag him around in circles too. Aaron is smiling and free, even after his cheerleader leaves early.

Neil is standing all in black once again, ripped jeans and jagged edges bleeding into the shadows in the corner of the room. He’s nursing a glass that he would claim is liquor, but Andrew knows is water.

He stands a statue. His eyes are storms.

Andrew almost wants to touch his hand, the one not gripped vice tight around the glass. Feel his rabbit heartbeat. But he doesn’t. Instead he stands in the eye of the storm and waits for the thunder to hit.

 

\---

 

Wednesday.

Warm.

Cloudless skies.

Objectively pleasant.

It’s late enough in Spring now that the sun stays out a little bit longer, and this seems to invigorate the Foxes post-practice.

Dan and Matt have already crushed Neil in a dual embrace for his good boy behaviour that day. Kevin is frighteningly agreeable. Allison and Nicky have convinced Renee that she wants a party in the dorms. She’s convinced them she just wants the Foxes there.

Aaron is gone.

But that’s nothing new.

Andrew learns much of this after it’s already begun. After the music has started and the sun has already decided to keep shining. 

“How was Betsy?”

Neils’ soft voice in his ear. Warmer than the sun on Andrew’s skin. They’re sitting on the desk by the open window, and Andrew is not watching the breeze ruffle Neil’s messy hair nor he is looking at the new freckles the sun has encouraged on his nose.

Neil is wearing grey sweats and pastel pink today. It should look stupid.

“She was fine. Insightful even.”

Neil looks at Andrew, judges him truthful, looks at him some more.

He seems more comfortable in this colour today. More alive, more steady, less violent in his posture. But his eyes. His eyes remain tired. Thunderous. Sharp precipices over a raging sea.

“And how was Neil today?”

Andrew says it sarcastically, apathetically, disinterestedly.

Fucking Neil Josten and his knowing smile.

“Neil has been just fine, thank you” he replies, voice assured and cocky. His hand twitches slightly against the surface of the desk. Fine.

Andrew raises a singular brow.

“I’m good, Andrew. Really.”

Andrew looks at Neil, judges him only partly truthful. But ultimately, okay.

Neil looks away from Andrew and he remembers that there’s music playing. He can hear it now, barely, over the voices of the Foxes.

Nicky and Allison are dancing, Dan and Matt are kissing, Renee is smiling beatifically up at them all.

And then Allison spots Neil.

“Neil! Let me teach you to dance you poor socially stunted thing!”

Then it begins, the arduous process of teaching a recently-real boy to dance. It’s a mess. It’s almost catastrophic.

Neil looks comfortable, comforted, pastel pink and safe.

He smiles and laughs as he spins Allison around to the beat, lets her teach him to dance. 

The breeze ghosts it’s way through Andrew’s hair.

Andrew feels the sun all over his skin.

 

\---

 

It’s Thursday.

Still warm.

Still April.

They’re drinking coffee on the outside tables, it’s early in the morning, and Aaron’s discontent is permeating the Spring air and filling Nicky with life.

“Aaron, Aaron. Hey Aaron. Isn’t it a lovely morning?”

Nicky’s voice says, ‘I’m a morning person today.’ Aaron’s face says ‘I slept 3 hours last night.’

“Get fucked, Nicky.”

His voice says much the same.

It doesn’t help when Neil laughs.

“Fuck off, Little Mermaid” Aaron hisses. This only makes Neil laugh harder. It’s spiteful and pointed, a sound that echoes off of Andrew’s bones.

Neil is wearing a semi-subtle mint green hoodie with his auburn hair skewed in distinctly upwards directions. He’s not a morning person either, not by choice, but he is always a petty one.

Andrew steals Aaron’s coffee when he’s not looking, and Neil laughs a little more.

Andrew’s coffee tastes sweet, and Neil’s tastes bitter when he steals that too. He wonders if it tastes any different on Neil’s tongue.

He’ll find out soon enough.

Nicky swipes Aaron’s phone from his pocket when he starts to fall asleep, takes seven selfies and cackles loud enough to wake Aaron up again.

Neil watches them fight, takes a bite of his chocolate pastry and passes the rest to Andrew. That too tastes sweet and bitter.

Andrew can taste the Spring in the freshness of the air, feel the ease in the sound of Neil’s barely there laughter. See the tension in the line of his neck.

He closes his eyes.

Then he raps Neil’s soft green clad arm with his pale knuckles.

“Time to go.”

It’s not.

Neil knows this.

But it’s time to go.

 

\---

 

As is often the case, things are mostly good until they’re not.

Neil is puking into the toilet in the now locked bathroom. His skin is covered in sweat, his heartbeat is faster than the Maserati’s engine, his eyes are closed despite the absence of light in the room.

He was screaming in his sleep before this.

He tells Andrew he has phantom pains in the tendons of his legs. He tells Andrew he feels fire on his skin and it won’t stop burning. He tells Andrew he thought he was going to die down there, he thought he was going to die for a long time and he was okay with that. He tells Andrew he doesn’t really know how to live now. He tells Andrew he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t breathe.

The lights in the bathroom are turned on now but Neil’s eyes remain shut, so Andrew cleans the nightmare away for him. Neil can’t stand, so Andrew won’t either. He sits with him. Hand on the back of Neil’s neck. Eyes locked on his just in case they open. Voice firm and solid when Neil tells him:

“Sometimes I think I’ll always be nothing.”

And Andrew says–

“You will never be nothing.”

 

\---

 

Neil is wearing grey today. Lots of grey.

His eyes are warnings, and the tension in his back is the only hint you’ll get if he decides to bolt out any one of the exits he’s counted.

He tears up the court floor like a hurricane.

Every time the ball hits the plexiglass Andrew hears ‘I thought I was going to die.’ He hears ‘I was okay with that.’ He hears ‘I was resigned to it.’ He hears ‘how do I live now?’

Every time Neil races away down the court Andrew hears it.

Neil wages his war all practice long, showers alone, reappears drowning in a black hoodie and missing behind the eyes.

It’s a long and tired day.

Andrew takes them outside, leans against the Maserati, looks up but the sun is missing.

Kevin leans against the wall, stands beside Neil. Silent. Unflinching.

The silence fills the spaces between them all.

Andrew lights his cigarette.

It burns down to nothing in his hand.

-

Neil sleeps like the dead are haunting him that night.

 

\---

 

Four days later and Neil remains grey.

It’s another warm Spring day, sleepy and slow like molasses.

Andrew looks at Neil finally asleep on the beanbag from his own position on the couch. Notices the bags under Neil's eyes. Glares Nicky half to death when he comes in through the door.

Nicky doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t say a word. Just sits on the floor next to Neil’s beanbag and looks at him too.

Neither of them say anything for a while. Andrew looks at Neil’s chest moving up and down with his breathing. His hands clenched in the ends of his grey sleeves. His hair hidden beneath his hood. His body tightly curled on the beanbag chair. The sun shines down on him through the window but his eyes are too screwed shut to see it.

“He was fine. A few days ago he was fine.” Nicky says it with sigh. With an ache.

And then Matt’s voice breaks into the stillness left behind. Andrew didn’t notice him come in.

“Recovery isn’t a straight line.”

And wouldn’t Matt know. Wouldn’t they all.

Nicky falls asleep on the floor after a while. Matt drapes Andrew’s extra blanket over Neil, leaves a glass of water safely by the beanbag, works at the desk as quietly as he can.

Andrew stays right where he is until sleep takes him too.

 

\---

 

Days later and Neil is screaming. He has been screaming for an eternity.

His tendons are bleeding out all over a dirty basement floor that keeps changing colour.

Andrew watches him bleed.

A man with a face like Neil’s that looks nothing like him is towering over Neil except now he’s towering over Andrew. No, Andrew is looking out through Neil’s eyes.

The cleaver comes down close to his ear.

There’s a scream, a voice that sounds like Neil’s spilling out from his lips begging the man to stop. Let him live. Let him die already.

The cleaver comes down again next to Neil’s leg but Andrew watches from the walls again. He can’t seem to move, can’t seem to speak, can’t seem to stop the butcher from mangling Neil’s face some more.

Andrew just watches.

Watches as Neil stops screaming altogether. Watches as Neil looks at Andrew, the tears running down his face finally ceasing.

Andrew listens as he says:

“I’m ready to die.”

And then Andrew is awake.

Andrew thinks of that day in Maryland, that fucking riot. He remembers the bus afterwards. He remembers sitting in the hotel room waiting. He remembers not knowing. He wasn’t ready for it then. He’s not ready for it again now.

Except he knows now what the crash to come looks like. He knows now what the next step to this fear is.

He reaches his hand out blindly, just to feel the warmth of Neil’s sleeping body, his skin, his physical living presence.

But the bed is cold, and Neil is gone.

-

Andrew doesn’t look for him. Because he doesn’t have to. He spots him sitting on the desk staring out into the late-night sky speckled with stars.

He counts his own breaths. In for five. Hold for seven. Release for five.

It doesn’t work.

(It rarely ever does).

Neil notices him almost instantly anyway, alert with nothing else to notice but the stillness being interrupted. 

Andrew moves closer to him, pulled like a magnet to Neil’s glowing eyes in the dark.

He takes his hand and hovers it over Neil’s scarred cheek. Neil, like a cat, leans into the skin of Andrews’ palm. Andrew can feel his pulse where his fingertip slips below Neil’s ear.

Recovery is definitely not a straight line. It is not always fun either. It does not always feel good.

Andrew rests his forehead against Neil’s, close enough to kiss him. Neil doesn’t move but to close his eyes, parting his lips, like he’s finally found relief. Water in a desert.

Andrew speaks into the air between them. “Come back.”

And so Neil falls asleep in their top bunk for a few more hours, but Andrew’s eyes stay open until the sun sets again.

 

\---

 

Still April. Later now by a day and a half.

Andrew hasn’t really touched Neil since that night.

He’s touched his sweatshirts though, his hoodies, digging through Neil’s drawers to find the shirt he stole from Andrew. He’s run his fingers over blue and pink and green.

But he hasn’t touched Neil’s skin, or run his fingers through his shocking hair. It’s messier than ever. He hasn’t touched Neil in any ways that count.

He thinks about much he needed to touch Neil that night. How much he wanted to. To feel Neil, to know he was there still. He thinks about how much he doesn’t want, how he’s not supposed to be able to anymore, how Bee would call this a step forward and his instincts call it stupid.

He wonders when he became capable of feeling like this. Maybe Baltimore. Maybe before. Maybe always.

“He’s a stubborn asshole, Andrew.”

Oh. Kevin is here.

Kevin keeps his hands his pockets, stays leaning against the door frame of the bedroom. He looks cripplingly awkward with what he’s about to say but equally as determined.

“He taught me how to fight.”

Andrew leaves the shirt and the hoodies and the colours in the open drawer and leaves.

-

Andrew finishes class that day with a destination in mind. His knives make his skin itch.

He hasn’t seen Neil at all.

His skin continues to itch.

It’s not quite time yet though, so Andrew drives. Aimlessly. In circles. Down the stretch of road leading away from Fox Tower, down the streets lined with trees where joggers like to run, back to campus. He sits on the rooftop of the tower and smokes with his feet over the roof’s edge and doesn’t look down.

When he gives up on his cigarette, it takes an awful long time to fall.

-

Andrew happens upon Neil sitting with Renee outside on the curb by the gym. Renee is sat not quite close to Neil, his fingers tugging gently at the ends of her hair. Whatever she says to him, it makes his hands fall still, the tension in his body stutter.

Andrew stares.

Neil notices him first. Which is typical of Neil really.

They move towards each other in almost the same instance and by the time they reach each other, Renee has already disappeared inside.

“Hey.”

Neil’s voice is quiet, deliberate, tired. But he looks at Andrew with the same blue fire he always has. Andrew takes the keys out of Neil’s own pocket, places them into Neils’ hand and lets his skin drag against his.

Andrew lets the sensation echo all over his body.

After a moment Neil closes his fingers around the keys, clutching them so tightly they dig into his palm.

“Andrew. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

His voice is so steady it feels like it should be a lie.

Neil is slow to kiss Andrew, takes him in first. Roams his eyes over Andrew’s face. When he finally does kiss him it’s like a plane crash.

“I’ll come back” he says, so firmly and so quietly.

Andrew hears what he says and sees what he means in the cut of his jaw and the softness behind his eyes.

Neil pulls back, jiggles the keys in front Andrew.

“To pick you up.”

Idiot.

Andrew asks the question this time.

-

Lying on the floor of the sparring mat, Andrew thinks about Neil playing with the colours in Renee’s hair. Later, she tells him she was helping him pick a favourite.

 

\---

 

The sky is clear today, and the air is mostly still.

Neil is wearing pale yellow with his hood down. His hair spills out in every direction, curls catching the light. He looks like the first rays of sunlight in Spring after a cold Winter. The breeze moves against his hair and his smile mostly reaches his eyes when he looks at Andrew on the rooftop.

Neil says something he thinks is witty, and he may be right but Andrew will never tell. Mostly, Neil says yes. With his voice, with his eyes, with the breath that catches in his throat when Andrew pulls away.

Andrew knows he slept better last night. Not all the way through, but the closest he’s gotten in a while. He knows Neil only counted some of the exits this morning before he caught himself.

He knows Neil.

They stay on the roof for awhile, mostly silent, only sometimes not kissing.

And then Neil moves away, leans back on his palms, tilts his head to hear the sound of the Foxes readying for practice through open windows. The sound of their voices melt into the warm air and carry away with the breeze until only Neil’s is left.

“Time for practice.”

-

It’s all going fairly well for something Andrew doesn’t care about, right up until an upstart Fox gets all upset. Andrew knows his name, he just doesn’t care to use it.

The baby Foxes don’t register particularly highly on Andrew’s radar, but even he is well aware that this particular Fox needs work. Except for the Fox himself it would seem.

So Neil had some choice but accurate words for him today, something along the lines of “that was awful, how many times are we going to go through this,” and then Andrew had stopped listening.

Andrew still wasn’t listening as they changed out, as they started to leave, even as baby-Fox continued to pick fights with Neil. Right up until:

“God I wish you’d died in that fucking basement.”

Andrew made no conscious decision to do it.

But.

Between one moment and the next, Andrew is wearing blood on his knuckles from baby-Fox’s now bleeding nose.

There’s a lot of commotion after that, but not the sympathetic kind for the bleeding Fox on the ground. Even with his blood on his hands Andrew can’t bring himself to care about his name. No one else seems to care much for him either.

Later, Andrew thinks about why he did it. Usually, he needs a reason. A promise. A duty.

This time was a little different.

It’s new.

Because Andrew can remember the feeling of thinking that Neil was dead, he can remember not knowing those last words were goodbye until it was too late. Too late to say no, fuck you, you’re staying.

Because Andrew doesn’t want Neil in grey, he wants him in pastel pink and light blue and semi-subtle mint green and pale yellow, and he wants him left the fuck alone.

Neil kisses his knuckles when they get back, after he cleans the blood away, lips cool like the evening air.

He says, “You don’t have to do that for me.”

He teases Andrew with words like “I thought we agreed our deal was off?”

Idly, as he tells Neil to fuck off, he catches himself thinking that at least no blood touched that pale yellow.

 

\---

“This is disgusting.”

“Neil. It’s a cinnamon bun.”

“Yes Nicky, and it tastes like pure sugar.”

Neil scrunches his nose, and Andrew takes the cinnamon bun right of Nicky’s greedy hands as they move to steal it.

It tastes light and airy and sweet. It crumbles on his tongue.

Neil steals Matt’s ham and cheese croissant when it lands on the picnic bench across from him, and Matt slides a black coffee to Neil.

Matt watches Neil eat his pilfered croissant, looks hard at Andrew. Andrew nods, because yes this is the most enthusiasm Neil has shown to food in a while.

“Hey Neil, nice hoodie.”

Neil looks up at Matt’s voice and smiles. Looks back down at his food, sips his coffee, but the right dimple on his cheek still shows.

Today Neil is wearing light purple.

-

On the rooftop that evening, Neil looks like he was pulled out of the sky. Soft and light and all his purple lit up by the setting sun.

Like a painting.

Like a dream.

\---

 

The next night is full of chirping bugs and cool breezes.

Neil is wearing peach, and he looks like something edible and sweet under the lights of the ice cream parlour. He steals the ice cream out of Andrew’s glass cup just to taste it.

Bubblegum flavour. Sprinkles that stick to his lip enough he has to lick them off. Andrew watches the journey his tongue makes.

Neil’s’ freckled nose scrunches up in distaste.

Neil has said eight things in the past hour. He teased Andrew on the way into Sweeties. He smiled with his eyes when Matt and the others agreed to come along tonight.

The next ice cream he steals from is Nicky’s. He clearly doesn’t like this much either, not that Nicky seems to care at all.

“Do you want some Neil?”

“No thanks.”

“Come on have it!”

“No.”

“You need to expand your taste buds you cretin.”

“Fuck no.”

“Neil!”

Neil however has already abandoned Nicky’s ice cream sundae and his whining.

The next victim is Aaron. A bold move. It’s a flavour Andrew knows Neil would hate. But he eats it anyway, slowly, purposefully, deliberately.

It’s stupid and petty and Aaron is livid behind his eyes.

And then Nicky steals some too and then so does Matt and so does Dan and Neil just smirks at him and moves on.

Matt’s ice cream gets a small tilt of Neil’s head. Sorbet like the colour of Neil’s hoodie. Matt grins at Neil like he just won the Super Bowl.

In the end, Neil drinks the rest of Kevin’s seemingly abandoned smoothie and leaves his own chocolate caramel swirl to Andrew. 

-

Neil dances under the flashing neon lights of Edens’ that night, badly and not for very long, but he catches every colour of the lights on his skin as he moves.

 

\---

 

It’s the last day of April.

They’re sat outside on the curb of the parking lot of the Foxhole Court, all of them that count. Allison has left a lipstick mark on Renee’s cheek that she can’t seem to stop staring at, and Nicky is convincing himself and only himself that he did a great job at practice that day. Matt is throwing blades of grass from the bank behind them at him when he’s not looking.

Kevin is reeling off opinions to Neil who is not listening in any way, and to Dan who has strong opinions of her own. Aaron is half asleep leaning against the grass bank.

Andrew smokes his cigarette and stares at the bright neon orange of Neil’s hoodie. 

Neils’ fingertips are almost brushing his. Not quite. But almost. Andrew can smell grass and sweat and clementine body wash.

“Thank you for waiting.”

Neil’s voice sounds like a secret no one else is supposed to hear. They probably aren’t. His eyes are calm rivers again.

Andrew lets their fingertips brush together.

“Shut up.”

-

The last day of April is almost over.

The Maserati is speeding along the highway and the lights passing by are flashing across Neil’s face. The passenger seat window is open and Neil’s arm reaches out of it, his hand holding onto the top of the car.

He looks loose and cocky, alive and undeniable. His sleeves are rolled up to feel the evening air.

His stupid hair is a stupid mess in the corner of Andrews eye and he reaches out to run his fingers through it.

The lights keep passing by, and the neon of Neil’s hoodie catches every single one.


End file.
